Environmental Responses and Interspecific Associations of Fish Communities in the Zhoushan Fishing Ground Revealed by HMSC.

Abstract

The fish community structure of the Zhoushan Fishing Ground is undergoing change due to overfishing, climate variability, and other anthropogenic stressors. To investigate community-level environmental responses and interspecific associations in this region, we used 11 consecutive years (2014-2024) of spring bottom trawl survey data from the Zhoushan Fishing Ground and integrated environmental covariates to build a two-part hurdle model within the Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (HMSC) framework. The results showed that the spatial random effect had the highest contribution (41%), followed by the interannual trend (18%), indicating that community occurrence patterns are primarily shaped by the superposition of stable spatial structuring and long-term change. Depth was significant for more species, whereas salinity was significant for the fewest. Residual correlations further revealed that the focal fish species could be partitioned into two assemblages with one linking species. Meanwhile, within the two-part hurdle model, the direction and significance of responses to the same covariate were not always consistent, supporting that species occurrence probability and positive biomass are governed by different ecological processes. Overall, this study provides a transferable quantitative framework for community assessment in coastal fishing grounds and offers a more operational chain of evidence for ecosystem-based fisheries management.